GT, perhaps unsurprisingly, has dierent criteria for success than traditional quantitative research. Grounded Theory is not said to be `valid or invalid' in a traditional naturalistic sense, but judged based on the following criteria.
Fit How closely do proposed theories and concepts match the `real world'?
Relevance How relevant are the ndings of the studies to academics, participants, and the general pubic?
Workability How useful is the theory in practice? Does it yield useful results in situ? Modiability How easily can the theory be adapted to include new elements? (Glaser
and Strauss, 1967)
A good Grounded Theory study should score highly on all these criteria. What is important then is not (per se) validity, statistical accuracy, or universal application; but the production of theory which ts observations from the real world, is relevant to the needs of dierent groups of people, works well when applied, and can easily expand and be modied when new observations come to light.
Fit will be judged by how helpful the theory and analysis comes to matching testimonies of listeners. This will hopefully be relatively intuitive everyone (apart from deaf people), including soundscape researchers, has experience of listening and therefore has the experience to judge any models I propose. This is in contrast to a lot of social research, where the reader may not have any experience at all in the area under study. One of the advantages of this piece of research is that, in researching listeners and not specic places,
it is theoretically relevant to everybody with an interest in listening, and its usefulness will be judged by listeners themselves.
Workability is a harder trait to outline. I hope the results of the study will have many outputs; these are dicult to imagine before beginning, but at the very least I'd hope that it will give a more holistic overview of soundscape response. Modiability should be simple as well, given the extremely exploratory nature of this study. There is a lack of theory in this area anything created will be an outline that doubtlessly can be improved, partially refuted, or adapted to include new listening methods.
All research qualitative and quantitative has similar values. Lincoln and Guba summarise these as follows:
Truth value: How can one establish condence in the `truth' of the ndings of a particular inquiry for the subjects (respondents) with which and the context in which the inquiry was carried out?
Applicability: How can one determine the extent to which the ndings of a particular enquiry have applicability in other contexts or with other subjects (respondents)?
Consistency: How can one determine whether the ndings of an inquiry would be repeated if the inquiry were replicated with the same (or similar) subjects (respondents) in the same (or similar) context?
Neutrality: How can one establish the degree to which the ndings of an inquiry are determined by the subjects (respondents) and conditions of the inquiry and not by the biases, motivations, interests or perspectives of the inquirer? (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, p290)
I argue that the ways we establish these values within soundscape research are limited. `Truth value', or consistency is often established using statistical data and closed in- terviews: I aim to show how other `truths' can be derived using in-depth interview data. In this gure, truth value is linked heavily to t and workability accurately describing soundscape responses, and creating useful theory, is of great use regardless of the methodology used to do it.
`Applicability', or transferability, is the measure of how much any research can be applied outside the context in which it was performed. In this case, I will show how `thick' descriptions of individual listeners can give insight into the habits of a broader group of listeners. While my research demographic is limited, the range of responses is not. `Theoretical saturation' is the goal here, to use GT nomenclature; ideally, theory created will be applicable to all listeners, with any `new' responses in future research either tting within existing categories, or the model being exible enough to accommodate extra categories. This links to relevance, workability and modiability.
`Consistency', or dependability, and `neutrality', or conrmability, both relate to the process of `auditing' (Seale, 1999, p45) the data which can be done in a qualitative context using the rigorous and methodical coding of Strauss & Corbin's (1998) version of GT. However, it is also hoped there is a certain intuitive correctness with this study in particular in a eld underexplored with qualitative methodologies, I hope to be able to formalise some of the more `self-evident' truths in soundscape research. Admittedly, dependability is a weak point with GT, but then any new attempt at theory building is going to struggle in this area.
Success therefore is judged along dierent lines when judging qualitative research. While it may initially seem at odds with more quantitative methodologies, the core aims of all research are generally similar, but achieved in dierent ways. As stated repeatedly now though, my goals are to create something intuitive, broad, colourful, and descriptive, that helps re-frame the way soundscape research is done. As a nal note, it's worth referencing Thomas and James (2006), who cite the biologist Peter Medawar:
There is little real distinction in fact to be made between deductivism and inductivism. These words merely relate to postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up and the public sees us. Didence is the hallmark of the modern natural scientist when it comes to reection on method. (p13)
Despite all this, in many ways the epistemology is less interesting than the results. Didence should of course be challenged: what really matters however is the end result
in many ways.